


Nowhere to Go but Everywhere

by homesickblues, StellarRequiem



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fake Marriage, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Snowed In, sharing a van
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 00:23:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12829317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickblues/pseuds/homesickblues, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarRequiem/pseuds/StellarRequiem
Summary: Karen has some emotional recovery to do, Frank is still working on "after," and all along the east-west interstate, someone has been abducting children and wiping all record of the disappearances.**The roadtrip fic has arrived





	Nowhere to Go but Everywhere

**Author's Note:**

> we run a kastle trash blog over at queensofthekastle.tumblr.com

Manhattan, NY, NY

This is the third fucking week. The third fucking week without a word from her, no bylines, no contributions, no anonymous editorials that smack of her fire and ferocity. Karen, she has no small feelings. Her writing doesn’t fade into a page. If something she’d written was in this paper, he would know. He’d be able to tell. But there isn’t. There’s nothing.

  
No remembrances, nothing like that, that’s good. Odds are that physically, she’s fine. But she’s not where she’s supposed to be, and fine isn’t going to cut it. And it’s not like she’s out for the holidays--season for that is over. Shit, spring is an inch from knocking in places less dreary than here. This city, it spends half the year trying to clean itself out, rain and snow and rain again, but more happens here than can be flushed out by weather. And if any of it has touched her again--

  
Living like this, normal, group once or twice a week, working odd jobs to cope again as if he needed the money, reading until his brain doesn’t have a choice but to dream about the books at least some of the time . . . it’s hard enough without a reason. Anyone touches her, gives him that reason, and there won’t be second chances enough in the world to save their sorry asses.

  
Frank tries her apartment the usual way. It’s 4:00 pm on a Wednesday, if she’s at work, she’ll be home in the next hour or two if not immediately. He finds reasons to loiter outside across the street without resorting to begging, this time. He blends in all right with longer hair, between the pardon and the turning of the world he’s less skittish about being seen than about being seen _with her_. Those CIA docs, they’re as good as they get, but it’s her reputation and speculation they don’t protect from. Distance is good. It’s safer. Even with no one watching for him.

  
The cafe he parks himself at is closed by 6:00.

  
No Karen.

  
“Shit.”

  
Rushing in won’t help anyone. He goes to the alley first, scanning for the window--for flowers in it, maybe--and finds a light on. Someone’s home.

  
Fire escape on the building opposite says the TVs on, too. No one moving, thought. No shadows, no channel flipping. She'd better be asleep on that couch, she'd better be--

  
This hour of the night she's more likely than ever to be jumpy, but she knows her way around that gun. She's not going to blow his head off. Unless something is really wrong. Every kind of wrong. If she's hiding up here, if she's waiting on an ambush, hopefully she aims low enough not to kill him instantly.

  
Frank goes to her door with flowers in one hand--he’d come prepared, look like someone with a reason to be here--KA-BAR at his hip ready beneath his free hand. He knocks with the fist around the roses. Make sure to say her name loudly enough she might recognize his voice. At this point, he'd know hers. Maybe that goes both ways.

  
It's her that opens the door. No gun.

  
“Don’t shoot,” he tells her anyway, as she’s breathing his name. Not much air behind it: she sounds how she looks, exhausted. She waves him inside with surprise in her eyes and circles beneath them, her hair, pulled into a ponytail, fuzzy and disheveled on one side like she’s been laying on it for a while. And her clothes--if she left the house today at all, she’s changed since. These are pajamas. And he doubts she has: she’s not wearing makeup, or even the leftovers of it, and the pajamas are creased with hours worth of wear. Loose shorts and a black T shirt with a grossly familiar image on it, wrinkled into the shapes of her couch.

  
“You’re kidding me with that shirt,” he says, closing the door behind him. “What the hell is--”

  
And then she’s there, in his arms, holding him around the waist with her face planted in his chest. Holding hard, too. Like she’s using him to anchor her to the Earth. Not the most reliable anchor . . . But he’ll plant himself where she needs him.  
He wraps his arm around her, forearm in the curve of her back as he tries not to smack her with the roses in his hand, free palm at the base of her neck. Her answer to the touch is to hold to him like she's trying to dig holes into his back.

  
“Hey, hey hey,” he murmurs, as gentle as he can. “What’s this?”

  
She shakes her head with her face still in his chest, and says nothing. That’s what cuts into him: she’s not the silent type. Argumentative, if anything, and never silently so. Never that.

  
He holds her that much tighter, close as he dares. Her head fits against his cheek, soft. Her hair is slick enough to suggest she hasn’t showered yet today, still smells fruity and musky enough to have been washed recently. He's six seconds from planting a kiss in the thick of it. He's got no other way to react.

  
“Hey. Karen. Talk to me, ok? Please.” Please. “What is it?”

  
She pulls back slowly, without letting go of his waist. He drops one of his hands.

  
Only one.

  
“The T-shirt,” she begins, avoiding his eyes, “was a gag gift from Ellison, his way of telling me in front of everyone we work with that he thinks I knew you were alive no matter what I say otherwise.” She smiles, just a little. “It turns out it’s pretty comfy.”

  
Frank resists the urge to scoff, but allows himself a tease, watching her reaction, measuring it for some sign of what's devoured her like this. Her humor is intact, somewhere in there. Whatever this is . . . it isn’t desperate. Deep, but not desperate.

  
“Looks more comfortable than the real thing, that’s for sure.”

  
Karen snorts, and pulls free of him completely.

  
“Drink?” she asks, still not looking at him, not directly.

  
“Only if you want one.”

  
At last, she meets his eyes.

  
“What are you doing here, Frank?”

  
He holds out the flowers.

  
“You tell me. You haven’t been writing, thought something might have happened to you. Sure looks like you could use these, in any case.”

  
Her face in her hands wasn’t what he’d been expecting, but that's her immediate reaction. No argument, no comeback. Just despair.

  
“Fuck,” she mutters into her palms.

  
“Karen--”

  
“Come sit down. It’s not that long of a story, but, I get the feeling you’re going to want to play twenty questions. Thank you, for these.”

  
She reaches for the flowers and waves him toward the couch while she steps aside to drop them into an empty vase, sitting like the mockery of a centerpiece, on the kitchen island. He doesn’t sit until she’s beside him.

 

  
***

 

Having Frank here, in front of her, solid and breathing and alive… it feels like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. One that’s about to force her to confront everything she’s been cramming down, folding over and over again at the seams, and avoiding. It’s shitty enough that she’s been banned from entering her place of work for thirty days, or until she ‘figures her shit out’.

  
Taking a cursory glance around her apartment as she lowers herself onto the couch, realizing how much of a wack job spook she must look like to him. Papers are scattered everywhere. Hell, she’s even got it pinned up on her walls like a real beat maniac. Across from them hangs a full map of the States, as big as she could find at 7-11 at 2am the previous night.  
She can see the curious gears turning behind Frank’s eyes, so she huffs and pulls her feet up onto the couch, tucking them beneath her, and delves in.

  
“I’m on sabbatical,” she starts. “It’s nothing _bad_ … I just… got in over my head. I didn’t sleep for a few days straight, forgot a few meals, and one morning I’m trying to make our shitty keurig machine function and next thing I know I’m on the floor and my arms feel like they’re filled with sand.”

  
There’s a beat where Frank just stares at her. Brown eyes toeing the line between chastising and worried. It’s one of his looks she knows well.

  
“Dammit, Page,” is what he says when he finally speaks. He digs his thumbs into his temples and hisses out a sigh. “Why they fuck weren’t you sleeping? Or eating?”

  
“Um.” If she knew how to respond, she could have probably talked her way out of her forced leave. Solid, definite answers to why she feels the way she feels would seem like a miracle at this point. The ghosts that move around in her mind are mostly vague blurs and outlines; an amalgamation of parts and pieces which add up to the reason behind her constant nightmares.  
One of the ghosts is lithe and square-shouldered and has horns.

  
She tries not to focus on that one too much.

  
“I think I just got overwhelmed by a few things,” she concedes. “There are a few things I haven’t really come to terms with yet. A few demons I haven’t faced.”

  
“Demons,” Frank echoes. “Karen, if you haven’t found time to grieve Red yet…”

  
“I have,” Karen counters, but her shortness is enough for Frank to catch her bluff. She can feel where his arm is resting on the back of the couch behind her inch down ever-so-slightly to press into her shoulders.

  
“Has your lawyer friend called recently?”

  
“Foggy?” Karen huffs a laugh, hanging her head. “No. No one’s called. I haven’t seen Foggy since Matt’s funeral.” She hasn’t seen anyone. Foggy’s clearly been busy moving on up in the law world. She doesn't know anyone else on a personal level in New York. Frank doesn’t need to know that.

  
“Some friends you’ve got there,” he grits out, and Karen can’t help but flinch. Loyal to a fault; it’s a part of herself she’s trying to control.

  
“Everyone deals with things differently,” is all she can find it in herself to respond. She didn’t expect him to drop in. She hasn’t heard one word from him since the last time they were together, when Frank had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of his left bicep and looked at her like she was breaking his heart.

  
“So.” She decides to change the subject. Anything but her current mental state. “How’s your _after_ been, Frank?”

  
She realizes it immediately after she says it. “After”, like it’s that easy. “After”, like it’s a concept he’s capable of answering tangibly.

  
She also realizes how it comes out. Bitter. Bitter because she’s been lonely. Bitter because she’s missed him.  
“Lots of sleep,” he says after a long pause. “Tv’s sure better now than it used to be.”

  
She can tell from his bruise-toned under eyes and the way his shoulders are just ever-so-slightly more hunched than they normally are that there’s more. She’d heard, of course, when the CIA and the DHS had cut him a deal. Dinah was a bit harder to make talk, head injury and all, but she’d sent Karen a piece of papermail like it was the eighteen hundreds to let her know, _he’s okay, they cut him loose, but we’re keeping an eye on him_. Karen had held onto it -- the information that Frank was alive and free. She’d let it rock her to sleep and keep her warm. Just what it all entails, though… she knows she can’t even comprehend.

  
_You could have at least called_ , she has the urge to say. _You could have at least let me know you were okay._

  
But she doesn’t. It hangs in the air between them, though, uncomfortable and obvious. She watches as dark eyes scan her apartment; over the papers and maps and cold Chinese food boxes left out on her coffee table next to an empty bottle of wine. The large kind she can get at the liquor store down the street from Rajish for a reasonable price. It’s one step up from swill, but the taste doesn’t really make a difference to her anymore.

  
“Enough about me,” Frank says. Changing the subject. _Good_. “I’m more interested in finding out what steps you’re taking so you don’t hit the ground again.”

  
Back to her. _Dammit, Frank_.

  
“I’m eating and sleeping,” she answers too quickly. “There isn’t much else I can do all day.”

  
“You should get a cat.” Frank pulls his arm away and stands. “Or at least a cactus or something.”

  
“I don’t know if I’m ready to discover that I’m less nurturing than a desert, Frank.”

  
He throws her an amused smile over his shoulder as he makes his way toward her window. The big one, the only one save for the tiny push-out in her bedroom. It’s looks just like another window in another shoebox walk-up that bullets once made fine work of shattering. Bullets that were meant for her. Bullets that Frank saved her from enduring. When she was cleaning out that apartment to move, she kept finding shards of glass in odd places: under couch cushions and in the heating vents, each jagged piece reminding her that she owes her life to this man, several times over. She wonders if he’s thinking about that too.  
About the elevator, maybe…

  
“So what’s this all about?” He picks up a folder she’d left on her windowsill, thumbing through it. In a moment she’s at his side, swiping it out of his hands and spreading it out on her kitchen table. She was hoping he wouldn't ask. But then… no, that's a lie. She'd enthusiastic he asked. She's _relieved_. She's been sitting on what is possibly the lead of her career and she's had no one to tell but ghosts. Frank has listening ears. It's one of her favorite qualities of his. He'd listen to her even if she was stark raving mad.

  
Which she’s _not_.

  
“I guess I’ve been a little more preoccupied than I mentioned...” _Understatement. Downplay. You’re not a crazy person. Yet._ “Right before Ellison gave me the temporary boot, I got an anonymous tip. An encrypted email that I actually sent to your guy, Lieberman. It was full of missing persons reports and amber alerts that just… vanished. Kids and teenagers who have faces and names, and then suddenly, they don’t. I tried to put a trace on every one of them, but it’s like they never existed. No police records, no reports, no social media mention, _nothing_. Like the families had been silenced as well.”

  
She can feel Frank behind her, peering over her down at the explosion of files and low-ink print-outs covering every inch of wood. He’s silent. She probably shouldn’t have mentioned Lieberman. Because Lieberman clearly didn't mention that he's been in touch with her.

  
_Divert. Veer left._

  
“Yesterday, I was trying to piece things together, and I realized something.” She turns and is met with a face-full of Frank. _Why does he have to be broad as a barn_? Putting her hands on his arms, she shuffles around him and goes over to her map. He lets her with a quirked brow and a tight frown. “There’s a pattern. All of these disappearances have been happening all over the country but on one route. It runs from Los Angeles all the way to here. Random… small towns and pit stops, mainly, is where people vanish… _children_ vanish… but it all seems connected. This is huge, Frank. This is… there’s something really deep going on here. Something really… fucking sinister.”

  
Frank stares. She doesn’t blame him. Every good story starts with a few blank stares. This one, she’ll admit, is a bit worse. Frank’s blank stare is like an echo chamber designed to make her realize how ridiculous she sounds. And she’s aware. She’s painfully aware.

  
“What do you think’s going on?”

  
“That’s what I’m trying to piece together. Who’s taking these kids, and what are they doing with them that’s serious enough that every single trace of them is being wiped?”

  
“Can’t be good.” He scratches the back of his neck, squinting up at the obnoxious red sharpie line she’s drawn tracing the interstate across the country. Intrigue. She can sense it. Morality isn’t Frank’s middle name, exactly, but _justice_ is. And these kids deserve that.

  
“Obviously not.” She dips her head, heading back over to the table where the faces on the files stare up at her pleadingly.  
“You’ve got to get out of here, Karen,” Frank says from behind her. “This shit’ll eat you alive if you let it.”

  
She can’t deny that her apartment walls feel smaller and closer-in by the minute.

  
The map’s the only thing that doesn’t feel small. It feels impossibly big -- but open. And full of answers.

  
She’d be a shit journalist if she didn’t at least ask the questions.

  
It dawns on her. Not exactly for the first time since she received the anonymous message -- but it’s certainly clearer this time. More possible.

  
Frank straightens up like he can read her mind. “Woah, no, no, no, _Karen_ , I know that face. Don’t go getting any shitty, stupid ideas…”

  
“What use am I just sitting around here? I feel like I’m _rotting_ , Frank. I feel like I’m just… _festering_. I’m trapped. At least out there I can do _something_.”

  
“Do you really think your boss is gonna appreciate you just up and _leaving_ to go on something that could end up being a suicide mission? You could be messing with some real dangerous shit here, Karen. It takes some real brass balls to be able to erase records like that. I would know. You saw what happened to me when I went up against those guys. It goes all the way to the fucking top.”

  
“Someone out there sent me this information, Frank. Someone out there believes that I have the ability to help these kids. What kind of a person would I be if I didn’t go out and at least try?”

  
“You can cut it out with this whole Karen Page versus the world bullshit now, you know. It's not funny.”

  
But Karen’s already at her laptop, three thousand miles of open road beckoning her with a clear and unwavering voice.

 

 

***

 

 

“Karen, don't even think about it.” she ignores him, diving for her laptop. He moves to stand opposite her across the table, trying to meet her eyes over the top of it. No go.

  
“Karen. Look at me.”

  
“Why, Frank, so you can talk me out of it? Not happening. This is _exactly_ what I should be doing. I’m an idiot for just realizing that.”

  
“What you should be doing is _sleeping_. Have you been doing that? Huh?”

  
She pauses for a beat, a breath, before answering.

  
“Yes, frank. I'm fine.”

  
“Bullshit.”

  
She ignores him, and mutters something about how long it would take to get to Toledo. Fucking Ohio--what a destination. A good place to draw the line.

  
He reaches out and presses her laptop slowly closed, allotting plenty of time for her to remove her hands from the keyboard before snapping it shut.

  
“God damn it, Frank--”

  
“Hey. No. Don't start. Just listen: you look exhausted. You've got a marathon of fucking ‘Ghost Bros,’ or whatever that crap is, playing on your tv. You're wearing my tac vest on a T-shirt. No part of what's coming out of you right now could possibly be sane . . . believe me, I know how that goes.”

  
She rolls her eyes, but this situation, this he can read. She’s all right in the ways that could have warranted panic. Now the key is to slow her down before she eats shit running ahead of herself. Easier said than done. Not impossible.

  
“Now look,” he tells her, aiming for assurance and knowing it sounds earnest, “I will make you tea in bed, whatever you need, but you've gotta come down some before you commit to shit. Get a real night’s sleep, at a normal time, and screw your head back on straight: none of this spur of the moment crap.”

  
“Frank--”

  
“Karen, either someone is messing with you, or this is serious. Either way you should not choose to chase it when you're like this.”

  
Her mouth moves over a protest that fades out along with her frustrations. Her expression moves from spitfire to a weird quiescence. She stares at him for a beat in a sort of daze. It's not angry, not even perturbed, just a little mystified, and he can see the gears in her mind working triple time as she stares back into his eyes. For a moment, the map on the wall is forgotten.

  
“What if I want wine in bed?” She finally counters. She kind of . . . blurts it.

  
“I will get you whatever you want,” he replies, cautious, “as long as you leave your car keys with me when I go. Just. . . Please, take a step back here. You're all wound up, it's no good to you.”

  
Karens face melts into a strange, shaky smile. She steps back from the laptop.

  
“So . . . if I sleep on it, you'll hear me out.”

  
“Sure. It’ll still be crazy, but sure.”

  
She nods, slowly, and inches away from the table.

  
“There's sleepy time tea on the top shelf of the far right cabinet,” she says as she retreats, watching his eyes as if this were some kind of challenge. She’s not right, worse than she’s giving herself credit for. He knows that look, wanting to escape that badly--it doesn’t come from wellness. It comes from avoidance. But he’s not getting into it with her now.

  
“Consider it done. Get into bed, I'll bring it,” he tells her. She raises her eyebrows. “I’m serious.”

  
She takes a long look at the map on her wall, all that country drawn up in blue and green and beige, and nods to it. Not to him. It. Damn.

  
“Ok.”

  
“Ok?”

  
She nods again, this time to him. It's only negligibly comforting.

  
“Ok.”

  
Karen retreats to her little bedroom. He watches her go. She’s watching him right back. He shakes his head as he turns for the kitchen. She doesn’t have a kettle. It takes him three or four tries to get the water decent in the microwave before dropping the bag in. She strolls past once on her way to the bathroom, smiling at his attempts to test the water without just sticking his finger in it, a smile that’s all eyes and doesn’t make it to her mouth. She’s ready to crawl into bed by the time that he’s satisfied enough to drop the teabag in and bring it to her.

  
“Here.”

  
He hands it to her as she seats herself on the edge of her bed.

  
“Thanks.”

  
She blows on it while he stands there, at a momentary loss. She looks tiny in that queen bed, she’s lost weight, all bone as if there was much of her to begin with. Her calves--that’s what he notices the most. Karen is all strong legs, but now, she looks frail. Not skeletal, not sick, even, but fragile. And Karen, she’s thin, but she doesn’t usually look breakable. Not like this. Right now, he could blow on her and she might snap.

  
Knowing that must do something to his face, because she glances at him with soft eyes and a hard look. He clears her throat.  
“Get some sleep.”

  
He turns to go, but she calls his name. He stops in the doorway.

  
“Are you staying?” she asks.

  
“You bet your ass I am. Don’t get any ideas.”

  
She sighs. “Of course.”

  
“Good night, Karen.”

  
“Good night.”

  
He closes the door behind him. Turns down the TV. Now would be the time to do something to help her out, but shit, he wouldn’t know where to start. Most of the clutter in here is her maps and documents--there’s no messing with that. He finds a plate and bowl in the sink which he washes out for her, fluffs her couch pillows, recycles that empty wine bottle, waters the roses he brought, but considering the shape she’s in, for the most part her world is under control. If a trashcan overflowing with order-in is the worst of it, it could be worse. But then, she’s never been one to show on the surface what kind of shape she’s in.

  
Have it handled: that’s Karen’s MO. For better or worse.

  
The fridge is a bit telling. Like the trash, its contents are mostly leftover Chinese food. None of it’s all that substantial.  
“Damn it, Karen,” he mutters. “Do yourself some favors, huh?”

  
It doesn’t take any real digging to find her keys. She leaves them in reach on the dresser by the entryway.  
He grabs them before he leaves, and locks the door behind him.

 

*

 

Frank watches about ten episodes of whatever crap is on her TV before he’s able to pass out on her couch, and he wakes with a jolt to a dream he can’t quite grasp five, maybe six hours later. Karen is still asleep. He’s able to get through the bacon and start on the eggs he went out for before she wanders out, hair a mess.

  
“Did you . . . go grocery shopping?”

  
“Yup.”

  
“Frank, you didn’t need to--”

  
“Yeah, yeah. Sure I didn’t. Since you’re up, scrambled ok?”

  
He glances over his shoulder to find her smiling.

  
“Yeah, scrambled is great.”

  
She helps herself to a cup of coffee while he cooks, and takes a place at the table with her phone. The eggs are ready quick enough for that not to be worrying. The last thing she needs to be doing first thing in the morning is thinking.

  
He brings her a plate before going back for one for himself. She hasn’t started eating when he returns.

  
“Are you waiting on me? Don’t wait on me.”

  
She rolls her eyes and picks up her fork, but doesn’t put anything in her mouth until he’s seated. He watches that first bite.  
“Holy shit,” she says upon swallowing. “What’d you put in these?”

  
“Little pepper, little cheese. Good?”

  
“Delicious. I might have to let you do the cooking.”

  
“Sorry, ah--what cooking?”

  
A smile slides across her face as she chews. She may as well have planned the bite--maybe she did.

  
“Karen.”

  
She swallows, pours some coffee down her throat.

  
“On this trip,” she says.

  
“Shit, sleeping on that did you no good, huh? And what’s that got to do with me?”

  
“Nothing if you don’t want it to.”

  
“ _Karen_. Come on, what are you talking about?”

  
She shrugs. “Nothing, if you’re not at least a little curious. But I’m going. Frank, I _dreamed_ about it last night. And I woke up for the first time in two weeks this morning feeling like I could breathe. Maybe Ellison is right--I need to get out of the office. What better way to do it than to get out of New York all together?”

  
Frank sets his fork down much harder than he should.

  
“No, Karen, that’s . . . look, you want to take a vacation? That’s an idea. But leaving just to take a case, to get messed up in who knows what? That’s stupid, Karen. That’s all kinds of stupid.”

  
“ _That_ is what will give me enough purpose to function, Frank.” she snaps. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what it is to feel lost. I need a direction to move in, ok? And apparently this is it.”

  
He wants to protest. He wants so badly to warn her off of this, but the words are stuck in his throat. Hell, his throat has just closed up. Feels like a second of dying.

  
“Karen,” he manages to stutter. His voice cracks in the middle of it. She shakes her head.

  
“I understand why you you’re wary of me doing this, Frank. I do. I have no idea what I might find out there. But I’m going. Now, if you want to, you can come with me. But I’m going.”

  
Frank puts his face in his hands.

  
“You’re serious,” he says when he reemerges. He doesn’t need her to answer. He knows. “Shit.”

  
Karen sips her coffee, waiting.

  
“ _Shit_.”

  
Watching, waiting. Those blue, blue eyes just fixed on him. Like she knows what he’s going to say, like she knows how little reason he has not to jump on this like a grenade in a barrack. Like she knows how tempting that jump is.  
He runs his hand down his face again.

  
“Damn it, Karen . . .” he mutters, losing his grip on his last ounce of resistance as he speaks, knowing it’s a lost cause. “Fine. Ok? But we are not taking that crappy sedan of yours. And we’re not leaving without a plan.”  
Her eyes alight like fireworks.

  
“Be nice to my car,” she retorts, but she’s beaming. For the first time since he’s been by, she’s really smiling.

  
Hell, whatever stupid this turns into, it might already be worth it just for that.

  
“Your car could _park_ in my van,” he retorts, “and we are not taking it. It’s the van or nothing--we can’t pack shit in the Mustang.”

  
“Wait, Mustang? When did you . . .?”

  
“Same place as the van. It’s a nice car. Not a lot of storage. So I’m serious--we take the van.”

  
He’s got all of the _important_ shit packed in the van. Karen scoffs.

  
“Ok, ok. We take your giant macho van. How much of a plan do you need before we can get moving? It’s not like I have to get covered at work.”

  
Frank shakes his head. “An itinerary, all your leads, I want to be caught up on whatever shitstorm you’re driving us into. And pack well. Bring that hand cannon of yours, got it?”

  
She snorts, and begins to stand. “As if you need to tell me that. Ok. I’ll write us an itinerary--we can be out of here by tomorrow if you pack fast enough.”

  
He sighs.

  
“We can be out of here tonight. But Jesus, at least finish your breakfast first, yeah?”

  
She resettles in the seat she’d been climbing out of.

  
“Ok, yeah.”

  
And that’s it--they finish their eggs. She scarfs hers down like a starved dog, and when she’s done, when she stands to go wash her plate, she pauses beside him for a moment and bends to wrap him in a one-armed hug. Tight, quick. Close. All the thanks in the world wrapped up in the gesture--Christ, this had better go well.

 


End file.
